Nature's Workshop

Pooch the Pup is bindlestiffing through the forest. He pauses occasionally to observe the dwarfs milking cowslips and the bees milking honeysuckle. However an evil scientist and his pet vulture are enlarging grasshoppers to the size of horses, then shrinking them back down to insect size. They shrink Pooch to insect size. The plot becomes the Insect Police to the Rescue.

This means that Pooch has become a supporting character in his own series, a sure sign of cartoon senescence. Although Walter Lantz' production values were far greater than van Beuren's or Paul Terry's when they did this cartoon a couple of times a year, there is little point to it, nor are the gags obviously better.

Of course, the fact that the two New York cartoon studios thought this was a great idea for a cartoon and that Lantz thought it worthwhile to steal it indicates that it was popular. If so, its frequent repetition and eighty years has caused its charms to fade for me.